


All Things End

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Give Me The News [9]
Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: Divorce, Gen, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Victor Ehrlich: Disaster Bi, Victor/Roberta discussed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-25 00:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17110826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Roberta's gone. And there's other news to deal with.





	All Things End

    “So how are you holding up?” Wayne asks, sprawling on the sofa. “She left you?”

 

    “Yeah. I mean… I’m okay, I guess. We… we weren’t gonna make it. We never should have tried. You were right, you know, I should have taken more time.” Victor drops into the chair with a sigh. “Now everyone’s gonna think I’m… some kind of idiot.”

 

    “Oh-- Victor, don’t worry. Everyone already thought you were some kind of idiot.”

 

    “Gee, thanks, pal.”

 

    “Come on. You know I don’t mean it. You walked right into it, I had to.”

 

    “Yeah, I know, I know.”

 

    And he does. It’s Wayne, who… who says mean things but never means them, and who doesn’t say them to Victor especially, but to whoever does walk into it. He only says mean things if they’re funny, anyway, and he _does_ nice things, which is a hell of a lot better than someone _White_ who says the right things some of the time and then does awful ones, not… not saying something because it’s funny, but acting fine in front of everybody and then... _How Jack puts up with the guy…_ Maybe it’s stupid to be petty about all the little things. Maybe he shouldn’t get distracted being petty about White when Roberta’s just left, shouldn’t he feel more about that? It’s just… Victor doesn’t know how to forget things. Forget being treated poorly, pushed aside, laughed at, having his stuff messed with _his stuff messed with, had that been White, his jacket?_ or taken without so much as a ‘do you mind’, but this isn’t really what he should be upset about today of all days…

 

    “Hey… remember when you were complaining to me about how she was making you get rid of your stuff? Well… look, it’s not exactly what you’re missing, but… Got ya a little annulment present.”

 

    “Oh, real fancy wrapping job.” Victor laughs, as Wayne presents him with a plastic bag from the thrift store.

 

    “Nothing but the best for you.”

 

    It’s not his Beach Boys mug, but… it’s definitely a coffee mug Roberta would have thrown out, and it does have a surfboard on it, and it’s probably the most touching thing anybody could do for him just today.

 

    “Sometimes I think I’ll miss her. And then I think I’m relieved she left.” He admits softly. “I’ve been going back and forth since she left last night. Since before she left! I was going to end things with her. And I… I don’t know. Part of me is glad I didn’t have to and part of me is mad she beat me to it, and why-- why’s that the one thing we could agree on?”

 

    “Who can say? Relationships are a mess, especially with schedules like ours.”

 

    “I guess we just… differed on all the wrong things.” Victor takes a breath, setting the mug down carefully, nestled between his thigh and the arm of the chair. There’s an overwhelming sort of useless energy that fills him for a tense and terrible moment. He snaps his fingers, drums his hands against his knees just to try and work it out of his system. “Agreed on all the wrong things, too.”

 

    “Like what?” Wayne chuckles.

 

    _Liking men_. “I don’t know. We were just all wrong in the end. You know she accused me of plotting some kind of affair just because one of my patients was a blonde woman? I was completely professional, and no thanks to her-- the woman, not Roberta-- but she acted like she didn’t trust me as far as she could throw me!” _To be fair, you thought she’d stop you from wanting other men and it doesn’t work like that._

 

    “I don’t think she could throw you very far, either, big guy.”

 

    “Everything was so good when we met. She used to say she liked the real me. But ever since she introduced me to her parents, it’s like she wanted the real me to be different. And she wanted the real _her_ to be different. And… I’ll miss the real her. That’s the girl I fell for. I think it was. But… the girl that left me wasn’t the same girl I… Oh, I don’t know. I did everything she told me. You know, and I didn’t always like it! But I thought if I could, then she could… If she wasn’t so tense, maybe she’d be herself again, then I wouldn’t have to be so tense and I could be myself again, too.”

 

    “Hey. Now the door is open for the next big thing. And you know what not to do. That’s something, isn’t it?”

 

    The next big thing… the next big thing. Sure. Some other girl who’ll say she likes the real him and then tell him all the problems with who he is. Why should it be different? He’s never had a girl like the real him for very long. Not that they like the unreal him much better anyway, but… he doesn’t know how to fix what’s wrong with him without being just as unhappy as if he was alone, maybe more.

 

    He’s always been too much and not enough. Too excitable, but never about the right things. Too focused-- but not on the right things. Well how is his career not the right thing? There was always something. Snapping his fingers too much when he got nervous, only when he tried to stop then it got to be so bad and there was no emergency overflow for that nervous energy, and what was he supposed to do? Too picky an eater, but when he tried not being picky he was gagging on things at the restaurant and that was a mood killer. One girl said she didn’t like ‘that thing you do with your face’ and he still doesn’t know what he does with his face that’s objectionable. Too loud sometimes but then when he’s not too loud he’s too quiet, so…

 

    And then Roberta, who used to make him feel so good about himself, wanting him to be someone else in the end… She even had him buying into Weiss’ crap about… authority issues, or whatever he’d said the hawaiian shirts were emblematic of. They were emblematic of he-misses-surfing-and-it’s-not-the-same-in-the-Atlantic! They _are_ emblematic of he likes to have a good time and be a fun guy sometimes, and they make him feel less uptight, they are emblematic of… happiness! They make him happy! Color makes him happy! She said she liked his palm tree tie and then she said no hawaiian shirts because apparently hawaiian shirts aren’t normal, well…

 

    Well _he’s_ not normal! Normal is just a setting on a washing machine, so said the little sign his aunt has hanging in her kitchen, next to one proclaiming her love of cooking with wine, and that sometimes it even went in the food. Of course now washing machines make him think of Roberta-- no, of _Bobbie_ , who was sweet and fun and who liked him like he was. That’s the girl he misses.

 

    “I don’t want to see another girl after her.”

 

    “That bad, huh?”

 

    “No. Yeah. That good, too. It’s not… it’s complicated, Wayne, it’s real complicated.”

 

    He doesn’t have an issue with authority, either! If he had issues with authority, he’d have a very different relationship with Dr. Craig! But it’s different… some people are _real_ authorities on things. He respects that, a lot. Dr. Craig is an authority on surgery. Jack’s an authority on having a marriage that actually works-- well, having had one. Vijay is like… an authority on lots of things, actually. Helen Rosenthal’s an authority on absolutely everything. And Dr. Ridley _is_ an authority on psychiatric stuff, but Weiss definitely isn’t! Victor doesn’t have a problem with authority, he has a problem with people who _aren’t_ authorities and want to act like they are! He has a problem with people who don’t know what they’re talking about thinking they know more than him when they don’t, thinking they know more about him than they do, he’s got the problem every reasonable person ought to have, but he doesn’t have any kind of a problem with someone who knows what they’re talking about telling him something! He never has! Weiss just decided he did because of his shirt, without knowing a damn thing about him, and suddenly _not suddenly_ everything was falling apart. He should have taken Weiss as a bad omen and not proposed…

 

    “Yeah, the whole world feels real complicated today.”

 

    “Really?” He sits up a little straighter. “What happened with you?”

 

    “Peter White. Oh, _shit_ , I didn’t tell you? No one told you? Oh…”

 

    “What did he do now? Is he back on drugs? Is he out of the program?”

 

    “He better be! You know I pulled him off Wendy-- I had to knock him out, I hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher! Extinguished _his_ fire.”

 

    “What? Wait… what are you _talking_ about?”

 

    “It’s him, White, he’s the ski mask!”

 

    It’s simultaneously a shock and not. It sends a sick feeling through him _tried to talk about the two of you like you were the same when he’d done a thing like that and you’re not, talked about Bobbie, glad she’s in Philly glad she won’t ever come back even if he’s gone glad she won’t glad he can’t, the way he_ talked _about her about you_ just to think about it. Those women _found out later how he broke that poor woman’s arm and he thinks you’re like he is?_ and... and almost Wendy?

 

    “Is she okay? Wendy?”

 

    “I dunno. Real shaken up and a little… a little hurt, but… it could’ve been worse. Anyway, c’mon, we were supposed to be talking about a completely different miserable subject.”

 

    “You don’t feel like bragging about how you’re the hero?”

 

    “Not really. Not right now.” Wayne snorts. “It’s pretty shocking, right? I mean… I know they said you couldn’t trust anybody, the girls all did, but…”

 

    “It’s not that shocking, is it? With all the problems he’s had.” _With how nasty he’s always been._ “I mean I wouldn’t have guessed, but… I’m a little sorry I didn’t punch him.”

 

    “When?”

 

    “When he was talking about my wife. My ex-wife. I guess nobody punches people for talking about ex-wives.”

 

    “Ah, you’re better off. You could break your hand on that thick skull of his.”

 

    “That’s what I figured at the time. I mean, everyone has a thick skull, Wayne, it’s what protects our brains. So I can’t go around punching anybody.”

 

    “Sure you can, aim for the stomach. Hold a roll of quarters when you do it, to keep your fingers aligned, too, if you don’t want to hurt yourself. And keep your wrist straight.”

 

    “I’m not _going_ to punch anybody! And I haven’t been doing a real good job keeping anything in my life straight. I mean-- _shit_.”

 

    “Oh, breaking out the big boy swears.”

 

    “Shut up, Fiscus. I mean my life is in freefall here, my wife just left me.” He snaps. Except… his life isn’t, not really. She’s gone, but that’s it. Everything else is the same. But Wayne doesn’t seem to catch anything in what he has said, isn’t asking if his problems with Roberta had anything to do with his mind wandering to other men, and of course he doesn’t think that, that would be a crazy thing to think even if it is true.

 

    “I’m telling you, though, I mean I hit him pretty hard and I wasn’t sure he’d go down. He’s got a thick skull, he might be medically abnormal.”

 

    “Skull thickness has nothing to do with it. It’s the impact of the brain against the skull from the inside.”

 

    “ _Victor_ , I work the ER. I’ve forgotten more about concussions, KOs, and traumatic brain injuries than most people will ever know.”

 

    “Well if you’ve forgotten it, I’m reminding you.”

 

    “Anyway, so it’s his brain that’s medically abnormal, then, not his skull. Wouldn’t surprise me now. Either way… I guess this means it’s over.”

 

    “Yeah. I guess.” Victor looks down at his shoes a long, quiet moment. “Do people really think I’m like that guy?”

 

    “Like _White_? Are you kidding me here? No. No one thinks that.”

 

    “Wendy said I scare some of the nurses.”

 

    “You might make ‘em uncomfortable. While this has been going on, they’ve been afraid of every man in the building. No, it’s not… I mean, I don’t know, I’m not the guy to ask.”

 

    _He said you were alike only he said you weren’t_ man _enough to do the things you didn’t know he’d done you should have known he’d done them then you should have seen you should have known when he talked about your_ wife _like that you should have known would he have gone after her if he wasn’t stopped would he have she’s so small held her down she’s so small and hurt her so delicate she’s like a little bird of a girl would he have_

 

    “We should have seen it. We should have stopped him sooner. We should have known.”

 

    _Bet people still like him more than you even now_.

 

    “How could we have?” Wayne shakes his head, but there’s an uncertain waver.

 

    “Because… because of how he…” _Talked about your wife not your wife anymore still technically your wife you still couldn’t live with yourself if she was hurt like that if someone hurt her_. “Because when Wendy said everyone knew I couldn’t have done it, he said I wasn’t man enough to. And only a-- only a--”

 

    “He didn’t say that, when did he say that?”

 

    “He said that! Like-- like it’s normal, and a normal guy doesn’t-- Do they? A normal guy doesn’t think about it like that. A normal guy doesn’t think about it like that. They can’t, it’s awful-- I mean, I know I’m not normal--”

 

    “Come on, man, of course you’re normal.”

 

    “No I’m _not_! I know I’m not normal, Wayne! I know that.” His eyes sting. “I know I don’t pick up on things that other people do. I know there’s something wrong with me, and so does everybody else. Roberta figured it out in the end. But people can tell and I know they can tell, because they treat me different. And she said she liked me anyway, and I believed her.”

 

    “Hey…” Wayne’s hand lands on his knee, squeezing. “Hey. There’s not something wrong with you. Okay-- Look, so you’re not normal. Who says you have to be, huh? You know who’s not good at surgery? Millions of normal people!”

 

    “People don’t like me. My wife didn’t like me. She said she did and maybe she meant it when she said it and then she stopped liking me.”

 

    “People do like you. I’m people, aren’t I?”

 

    “Yeah.”

 

    “I’m not the only one, either.”

 

    “I make people uncomfortable. Women. I make women uncomfortable and I don’t… I don’t want to. But I didn’t know I was doing it! And White…”

 

    “You’re nothing like him, come on. Hey, are people giving you a hard time because everyone knows you and Roberta have been into some kinky stuff?”

 

    “What? No.” _Although that doesn’t help, does it?_ “Anyway, those handcuffs in my apartment, that wasn’t what it looked like. She wanted me to hold onto them because she trusted me, and Weiss-- that crackpot!-- thought it was bad for her to have them, but… I don’t think it hurt her any. I mean… it wasn’t even sexy or anything, but I don’t think it’s so bad if it had been, it just… wasn’t.”

 

    “So she left you the handcuffs but not the keys and you didn’t even get to have a good time first?”

 

    “Well… I guess Weiss didn’t have any problem with her keeping that. And do we have to talk about the arena of my greatest failure right now?”

 

    “You’d rather talk about your completely unfounded belief that nobody likes you?”

 

    “Wayne, every day of my life I have to pretend to be somebody. I don’t know how. And… I try to be like everybody else. I do the same things other guys do, I talk the way other guys talk. I try to. But I don’t… I don’t want to do that if it hurts people. I don’t know what it is about me-- when everyone else does it it’s normal and when I do it… I mean I always knew I wasn’t fooling everyone, but I didn’t know I was making people uncomfortable. Women. After everything that’s happened, and… I don’t want to be that guy if it’s going to scare somebody.”

 

    Wayne squeezes his knee again. “So be the real you.”

 

    Victor laughs mirthlessly. “Oh. Yeah. The real me. That’ll go over well. I’d lose my job!”

 

    “Craig’s not going to cut you for being Californian. He’s definitely not going to cut you for being… less good with the social stuff, I mean… all due respect to a brilliant surgeon and all, but men in glass houses, you know?”

 

    Victor shakes his head.

 

    “Your repressed surfer dude cool aside, I think your normal and Craig’s normal are probably pretty close.”

 

    He straightens up a little, dejection lifting. “You think so?”

 

    “Just try not to pick up his habit of snapping people’s heads off. You’ll be fine being you.”

 

    “What if I’m not? What if-- what if there’s things about me that-- What if I’m not okay, the real me?”

 

    “Are you a bad person?”

 

    “I don’t know.”

 

    “No-- Victor, come on! The answer is no! You’re not a bad person!” Wayne’s hand leaves his knee as he pushes himself to sit up, rolling his eyes. “You’re a good person!”

 

    “Oh. Okay.”

 

    “From the top. Are you a bad person?”

 

    “No?”

 

    “That’s right, you’re not. Are you a bad surgeon?”

 

    “No!” He squawks, almost affronted-- affronted for half a moment, until he realizes it’s the answer Wayne was expecting, that he never believed different.

 

    “Great. So you’ve got everything going for you.”

 

    “There’s stuff you don’t _understand_ , Wayne.” Victor sighs, turning away. “Nobody does and nobody _can_ and I thought getting married would-- I thought it would make a difference, but I guess it didn’t. So I guess nothing will.”

 

    Wayne pats his knee again.

 

    “You’re a good person. And you know what? I don’t care what Peter White says about you, because he’s talking out his ass. And I don’t care what Roberta says, because she… I don’t know. Because she left. She doesn’t get to have an opinion here anymore. You know who gets an opinion?”

 

    “Who?”

 

    “Me. And I like you. And I think other people like you. So buck up. There’s nothing wrong with you a couple hours of sleep won’t fix right now.”

 

    “I still have the pig she left me.” He sighs.

 

    “Okay.”

 

    “It’s a stuffed animal.”

 

    “Well that’s good. I was imagining her locking an animal in your apartment, suddenly I had the image of a very bad break-up.”

 

    “It would be like having you back.”

 

    “Ah, you’re fine, see.” Wayne laughs, shoving at him. “Kind of an unfortunate choice. Sensitive subject.”

 

    “She didn’t know about the-- the pig thing, though. This was back when things were… Well, when they were better.” He frowns. “I guess not ‘good’. Actually I guess most of the time things with us weren’t good. But I mean, she just thought it was cute. It is cute. I mean, I don’t mind it or anything.”

 

    “Well.” Wayne gets to his feet and claps his hand down on Victor’s shoulder. “Go. Sleep. Cuddle your pig. All things must end, but so will the pain.”

 

    “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

 

    He feels a little better. Not… not perfect. There’s too much Wayne really can’t understand. But… he’d know if people really didn’t like Victor. He wouldn’t lie. Maybe it would be okay.


End file.
